Chapter 3
It’s funny how we never know when our lives are about to change.
Today, for example, starts out like any other day.
In the morning, like usual, I am woken up by Terry’s music.
Terry is my next-door neighbor, and just like how I’m trying to be an author, Terry is trying to be a musician.
But the similarities between us end there.
Writing is a quiet endeavor. Terry’s vocation, on the other hand, not so much.
He has a keyboard right up against my bedroom wall, which is really not ideal.
I once gathered enough courage to ask if he could move it to a different spot in his apartment, and he said, “That room has the best acoustics in the house. You’d understand if you appreciated the arts more. ” Fair point, I guess.
And that is why I spend most of my nights with my pillow pushed down over my head, trying to block out the noise. At six, my phone alarm goes off. I grab my phone, turn off the alarm, and open my Gmail account, hoping to find an email from Poppy.
There is, in fact, an email from Poppy. My heart leaps for a split second before my brain registers the subject line: “Fwd: rejection from Summerhouse Press.” My breath releases in a dejected sigh.
I scroll through my inbox, taking count of all the rejections that Poppy has forwarded me so far.
We are on our second round of submissions.
The first round, she sent my book out to ten publishers and received six rejections.
The remaining four publishers ghosted her.
This round, she sent it to seven publishers, and so far we have received two rejections.
I try not to dwell on the fact that Poppy burned through all the major publishers in the first round and we are now left with the midsize publishing houses.
Let’s face it: I would take a deal from the smallest, least prestigious publishing house if it means that I get to be a published author.
I don’t need to go to Annette’s studio until later in the day, so after getting up, I go to the kitchen and turn an audiobook on while I make my breakfast. I take out my sourdough starter, Doughlores, from the fridge and pour some of it into a bowl.
I’m proud of Doughlores’s name. I mean, come on, how cute is that?
She’s four years old now, so she’s pretty mature tasting, and she gives the most amazing depth of flavor to everything I bake with her in it.
This morning, I opt to make sourdough chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
I always make way too much to finish on my own, so I set some aside to bring to work with me, and the rest I pack up into various plastic containers.
I go outside of my apartment and knock on Terry’s door. When I hear his footsteps coming to the door, I plaster on a sweet smile. Terry grins when he opens the door.
“Morning, neighbor,” he drawls. God, I hope he’s not flirting with me. I would just die if he did.
“Hi.” An awkward second passes, during which he stares at me expectantly.
I’m not good with conversations. Blame it on the friendlessness that plagued me all my school years.
It’s like I’ve forgotten how to socialize.
Sometimes I wonder if this is why Annette hired me: because she knows I’m good at being invisible.
Terry’s eyes move downward, to the container I’m holding. His face breaks into a grin. “Did you bake too many cookies again?”
“Oh. Yeah. Do you—” I don’t bother finishing the rest of the sentence as he reaches out and grabs the container from me.
“Your cookies are the best,” he says in a magnanimous way. “Your muffins, too, and your bread, and those little cakes you make.”
I smile shyly. Despite myself, he’s actually kind of winning me over a little. Ugh, get a grip, Fern. I take a breath and remind myself to stand straighter. “I was hoping that you could maybe lower the volume on your keyboard?”
Terry frowns. “What do you mean?”
My mind flails. Shouldn’t it be obvious what I meant? “Um, the keyboard . . . it’s right up against the wall where my bed is, and I can hear you playing—very beautifully, by the way—in the morning . . .”
“Thank you,” Terry says. He looks so pleased with my compliment, and there is absolutely no indication that he’s absorbed anything else I’ve said.
I try again. “So anyway, I was wondering if you could lower the volume or maybe move the keyboard away from the wall?” The smile trembles on my lips, begging to slide off. I valiantly fight to keep it on.
“Oh, Felicia, I’m sorry.”
“It’s Fern, actually, but it’s fine,” I mumble. “Thank you—”
“But I’ve tried other spots in the apartment, and none of them feel quite right, you know?
” He places a hand on my shoulder, and I gaze down at it, marveling at the wrongness of it, the way I can feel his body heat on mine.
He pats me like one would a dog. “The way the sound bounces off the walls and the items in the room—my keyboard belongs right there, in that spot. You understand, don’t you? ”
“Um . . .”
“How about you move your bed to a different wall?” Terry raises his hands like he’s just been hit by a bright idea. “I’ll even help you. How does that sound?”
The thought of Terry inside my apartment makes my stomach squeeze like a fist. “That’s okay, thank you for the offer,” I say hurriedly.
Terry shrugs. “Well, if you ever change your mind, don’t hesitate to come to me for help.”
“Sure, thank you.”
“No worries. Always happy to help out a neighbor.”
It’s only when I get back inside my apartment that it hits me: How in the world did that conversation end with me thanking him?
I smack a palm against my forehead. “Come on, Fern,” I mutter out loud.
This has always been my problem. I’m not just a pushover, I’m a mat that people feel free to walk all over, and it’s no one else’s fault but mine.
This, me being a people pleaser, is just one of many of Haven’s legacies.
Or so I think. I suppose I wouldn’t really know, since my torment at her hands started when we were just stepping into our teens, and even before that I’d always been a shy, retiring kid.
There’s a reason why throughout my childhood, Dani was my only friend.
So even without Haven’s cruelty, I probably would’ve still grown into a shy, retiring adult.
But maybe not an adult who knocks on her neighbor’s door to complain about the noise and then ends up apologizing to him instead. God, sometimes I hate myself.
I give out another couple of containers full of cookies to my other neighbors. They’re very grateful, which makes me feel better about myself. See? I want to shout at the world. People like me. I’m a good person.
By the time I get back inside my apartment, I’m smiling.
That saying about how spending money on others brings you more happiness than spending money on yourself?
So true. Which is why I pack up my remaining cookies for Annette.
Karma, I think to myself. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. And if you do bad things, well . . .
Actually, judging from how things are going for Haven, if you do bad things but are good at hiding them, you’ll probably go on to flourish. But today is a new day, I remind myself, and we are not going to spare the likes of Haven a second thought.
I smile as I make my way to work, even though there’s honestly not much to smile about in my neighborhood and there was one guy who I was pretty sure was jerking off while eating a wheel of Brie on the subway.
I’m not sure which disturbed me more: the public masturbation or the sight of him biting into an intact Brie wheel.
I clasped my container of cookies like a shield, hoping he wouldn’t notice me.
He didn’t, of course. I don’t have the kind of face that anyone notices.
At the studio, I arrange the cookies artfully on a plate at our snack corner and start making Annette’s coffee.
She arrives ten minutes after I do, and the only indication I get of her appreciating my cookie offering is a single sniff when I bring her in one cookie along with her coffee.
Pure Annette. It’s okay, though; I don’t mind.
It brings me genuine pleasure watching people bite into my creations.
The first couple of hours at work fly by as I prepare invoices for Annette’s clients and update the books as well as load two sets of edited photos onto the cloud.
Honestly, I have no idea what Annette is doing while I perform all these admin tasks for her.
Whenever I glance up at her all-glass office, she’s clicking away at her computer, though I’m hard pressed to think of what there could possibly be for her to do.
I do all the photo editing and the filing and uploading and emailing.
She does the . . . You know what? Doesn’t matter what she does. It’s none of my business.
Ten minutes before my break time, my phone beeps, and my entire body perks up because it’s the beep I’ve assigned to Poppy.
An email! my mind squeals. Then, immediately following the excited moment of “AH!” is the realistic, sobering thought: It’s probably her forwarding yet another rejection.
I try to temper my excitement as I reach for my phone.
It’ll be another rejection, I remind myself. Just another—
But it isn’t.
The email merely says: Hi Fern! Okay to call?
In the single second that it takes me to read these five words, my heart rate goes from normal resting rate to high-powered cardio speed.
In fact, my heart thumps so hard I can feel my palm pulsing, can almost see the phone juddering in my hand from the strength of it.
“Oh shit,” I whisper. I almost drop the phone as I reply: “Yes!” I hit send and stare at the phone, willing it to ring.
When it finally does, I stab at the accept button and slap the phone to my ear.
“Hi, Poppy? Hi!” My voice comes out slightly breathless.